Gunmen massacre 47 Iraqis

BAGHDAD - Gunmen at a makeshift checkpoint outside Baghdad dragged more than 40 people from their cars, shot them and dumped their bodies in a roadside ditch, amid growing violence between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis.

The latest violence has been brutal even by Iraqi standards. After two days of reprisal attacks on minority Sunni mosques since Wednesday's suspected al Qaeda bombing of a Shiite shrine, America and the United Nations are backing efforts to avert a slide towards all-out civil war that could wreck US hopes of withdrawing troops and inflame the entire Middle East.

The victims of the shooting were returning from a non-sectarian demonstration against the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

They were found near the village of Nahrawan, just south of Baghdad.

Police and Interior Ministry sources put the number of dead at 47 and said the victims included both Sunnis and Shiites.

The sources said the gunmen, whose sectarian affiliation was not known, apparently set up the false checkpoint just outside the town of Kenaan to catch the protesters as they were returning home.

It was not clear, however, whether all the victims were rounded up and shot dead in one group, or whether they were pulled from their cars separately and shot.

- REUTERS